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It’s been over eight years since the world-wide popular social media website Twitter was first launched by creators Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass.

With the recent re-design of the website and the introduction of the football world cup (one of the website’s most talked about events), Twitter is becoming an unstoppable social force.

So with Twitter now a staple in the personal and business world, we at EBS Marketing thought we’d give a quick insight into 2014’s most popular 140-character social media website. Giving you a few tips to make sure that you and your business are doing everything possible to engage, promote and interact online.

Share images

Sharing images on Twitter in the past was often just a passing thought. Perhaps a good idea in practice, the use of photos and images used to involve a lot on the viewer’s part. But now, Twitter images have a completely different impact. Now images show up directly in the timeline, and in turn can have a drastic effect on audience reach. Sharing images with text is a great way to increase your online visibility, as more people are likely to pay attention to your posts.

Favouriting

Favouriting on Twitter has always been a weird one. Mostly used as a means of notification, outreach and quite often, attention seeking, the favourite option for Tweets is used very generously by users. But now with favourites appearing publicly on everyone’s profile tab, perhaps it’s time to start rethinking the endless use of gold stars.

Try using favourites sparingly, and for their intended use.

Create lists

Lists have been a part of Twitter’s infrastructure for a long time now, but have fallen out of favour in recent years. But if used correctly lists can be used to both increase awareness of your brand and to organise your Twitter contacts. Try creating a number of different lists for Twitter users, with an emphasis on getting the attention of influencers and business contacts. Lists can be a great idea for all the networkers out there.

Upload in High-Res

With the new Twitter re-design, a lot has changed. One of the most notable changes has been to user’s profiles. Now dressed up quite similar to Facebook, Twitter now includes a customisable banner image. Whilst this is great news for most, we have seen far too many examples of bad profile pages with horrible, pixelated banner images.

When uploading an image for your banner on Twitter it’s important to remember that the image will be used ‘browser-wide’. This means that the image will fit however large your internet browser is – which is normally at the very least 1000px (pixels) wide. So make sure your photo or image is as high resolution as possible. Twitter recommend a photo which has the dimensions of 1500x500px with a maximum file size of 5MB.

Pin Your Tweets

One of Twitter’s newer features, pinning your tweets gives users the ability to stick any Tweet of theirs to the top of their public profile. Meaning that when someone visits your page, the pinned tweet will be the first thing they see. Whilst pinned tweets can be a great idea for new updates and info, try pinning something that gives an insight into your company. Try using a pinned tweet as an extension of the short bio on your profile.

We hope this short recap of Twitter in 2014 has in some way been helpful.

For more information about online Marketing, be sure to stay up to date with EBS Marketing on Twitter for SEO, Social Media, and business advice.

Using social media websites like Facebook for businesses and marketing has been in standard practice for many years now. Some of the world’s biggest brands and companies use social media to target potential customers, advertise new products, engage with their audience and receive feedback. But even with a wealth of knowledge and an overflowing database of past examples, businesses and Facebook marketeers still end up making mistakes. And these mistakes can be very costly.

But how do mistakes occur? Surely Facebook and social media marketing is just a case of posting statuses and links? Yes, it may seem simple at first, but having complete control over your brand, tone of voice, posting schedule, reply strategy, design, interaction volume and target audience is no easy feat. So to help out, we’ve put together a short list of social media marketing traits for you to keep in mind.

Tone of voice

One of the most important aspects of a good social media strategy, and one of the hardest skills to perfect is the development and implementation of a brand tone of voice; knowing how to speak to your audience. Too formal and your customers might not interact, too relaxed and it could ruin the reputation of your business. So choosing how to write your public messages and how you reply to your customers should depend on your line of business. If you run, for example, a bank, it might be advisable to conduct yourself in a formal manner, speaking as the business, as your customers might like to know that their hard earn money is being taken seriously. But on the other hand, if you run a cupcake business, it might be better to have a more personal approach to your social media, talking in first person, and interacting and replying with your audience.

Consistency

One of the most common mistakes in social media marketing stems from the regularity of interactions and posts. Facebook is awash with pages of 100 ‘Likes’ or less, with almost no content. So when thinking about taking the leap into social media, you should first decide whether you actually need a Facebook or Twitter page. If your company is fairly static with no steady news, or if you and your employees have no intention of using the page and have no access to a smart phone or laptop, then it’s best to reassess your options. But if you’re dead set on setting up a company page, then remember, regularity and consistency are the key. Get yourself a content schedule and set minimum posting standards, and stick to them.

Security

So you’ve got your company Facebook and Twitter page set up, maybe you’ve even got a LinkedIn and Google+ page too. You’re posting regularly and you’ve gained a lot of followers and fans. But now you have a responsibility to your audience and brand, and a simple slip-up could be disastrous. So it’s very important to bear in mind the security of your assets. Firstly access to your social media pages should be as limited as possible, only give out log in details to those you can trust or who are essential to your project. Often in larger companies both company employees, marketing executives and more can all have access to logins and details, and one slip can mean end game. We all saw what happened to Burger King on Twitter last year.

Employees

Also, another important aspect of a company’s online image is often determined by its employees. There’s a reason why BBC staff include a disclaimer on their Twitter profile stating ‘views are my own, not that of the BBC’. But still, an employee’s social media interactions can be very harmful to your company’s reputation, so a social media policy is always a good idea. There have been countless examples of employee’s posting harmful or offensive content ending in a public company apology and a swift contract termination. Here’s a particularly well publicised example.

For more information about social media marketing for businesses, be sure to keep an eye out for part 2 of our introduction.